I'm going to start putting everything back together this week and wanted to clean up the throttle body b/c its full of gunk. I also wanted to clean the carbon off the tops of the pistons. What can I use to clean both things?

 

Do a search for the huge thread about cleaning piston tops and read it.

 

well, you can use carb cleaner sold at most auto. stores, or gm makes a "top eng. cleaner" that will easily get rid of the carbon buildup. just spray it on, and wipe it off. works great. the carb cleaner will work easily on the TB, but the pistons will need some soaking time and maybe a dull (plastic) putty knife to remove depending on how caked up it is.

 

After you clean your TB, dab some oil where the butterfly rod enters the TB housing. This will keep it from hanging up and causing your rpms to hang.

 

Soak it in Berryman B-12 Chemtool overnight. Available at Autozone.

 

For the throttle body when i cleaned it, i used STP Throttle body cleaner. I got it autozone for liek 4 buck's or something like that. That stuff jsut takes that gunk right off!!! I would recomend taking the TB off to do it, cuz there is more gunk on the back than the front. it is pretty amazing, and very easy to do. If you didn't do that TB bypass yet, i would recomend doing it now since it is easy to do with the TB off. Hope that helps

 

Deep Creep from Seafoam. At your local Napa.

 

To clean the tops of forged pistons I have carefully used a sharp razor blade in combo with choke cleaner or something like Seafoam. One must be careful not to scratch or gouge the surface. Use plenty of cloth rages

DO NOT use oven cleaner. I saw some forged JE pistons ruined from that crap being used and left sit over night!

 

Well the reason I advised him to read the other thread is that I believe, like many others, that the piston tops should be left the hell alone. There is no improvement to be had cleaning them, and there is the distinct possibility of getting carbon particles down the side of the piston which will score the cylinder wall and piston skirt.

 

I decided not to clean the pistons. I figured they will get back like that in a day anyways. I picked up some valvoline carb and throttle body cleaner.